Incumbents Win City Commission, School Board Seats

Incumbents from the Birmingham City Commission and Birmingham Board of Education won back their seats during Tuesday's election while voters overwhelmingly approved the schools millage renewal.

The tension was thick at after polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday as representatives from the reported precinct results every 30 minutes, finally announcing the winners at 11 p.m.

Incumbents , , and were voted back on the City Commission, as were school board incumbents and .

Meanwhile, , and incumbent won the three open spots on the Baldwin Public Library board.

Both of the city's Charter Amendments also passed.

In total, 2,771 ballots were filled out throughout the day — a 26 percent total turnout rate, as compared to . Precinct 4 had the highest turnout, with 415 ballots.

Suhay, who won his first term on the library board, said he was relieved to win. "I worked hard," he said. "I'm looking forward to getting started. It seems like I've been working for the library all my life."

Tera, a former trustee for the Oakland County Library, agreed, though noting he doesn't take his win for granted. "It feels satisfying," he said. "But I was never as confident as everyone else seemed to be. I've been in politics a long time."

For several of the races, it was the absentee ballot count that decided the race. Rinschler lagged behind challenger Vicki Walsh by a little less than 40 votes before the absentee ballots were counted, when he pulled ahead to beat her 1,785-1,446.

According to City Clerk Laura Broski, 86 percent of the absentee ballots sent out were returned.

"It's interesting," said Rinschler, who spent the vote-counting at and showed up after the results were announced. "Election results are always hard to know what they mean. But we (as a commission) are doing fine."

Based on precinct results alone, Underdown was also behind library board challenger Ruth Ploski, before absentee results boosted him into third place.

Current Mayor Pro Tem Mark Nickita said the absentee votes truly make all the difference and most of the time dictate election results. He said if the school millage wasn't on the ballot, he believes all the incumbents would have had an early lead in the precinct results.

"If it wasn't for the millage, the breakdown would be different," he said. "The incumbents would have pulled out quicker."

Dilgard agreed. "The school millage brought out an additional 4-6 percent out for the city election," he said. "Without the millage, turnout would have been in the expected 20-22 percent range."

Here are the final results from the night. The winners are bolded:

(four open spots)

(two open spots)

(three open spots)

Birmingham Schools Millage Renewal

Charter Amendment I

Charter Amendment II

For complete coverage of Birmingham's Nov. 8 elections on Patch, check out everything we've written at the Patch 2011 Voter Guide or catch up with what happened on Election Day at our .